Whether you employ a single part-time consultant or a dozen full-time workers, the people who work for you are your most important -- and often your most expensive -- resources. Appraising and recording your employees' performance is not only beneficial to you, but to their professional growth as well. Microsoft Excel's versatility makes it relatively easy to customize worksheets for performance appraisals based on the type of work each employee does. It also contains features that let you track and compare appraisals so you can monitor trends and track progress over time.

Creating the Worksheet

The Microsoft Office website stores thousands of templates, including several Excel templates for performance appraisals and review forms. You can use these templates as they are or modify them for your own purposes. In most cases the top of the worksheet includes the employee's name, position and date. The evaluation section can include whatever criteria you find important such as demonstration of skills and knowledge, problem-solving, etc. It's a good idea to include review guidelines on the worksheet to ensure you use the same criteria for rating performance each time. For example, if you use a five-point scale, you can specify what each number represents.

Using Check boxes

Many of the performance-appraisal templates use check boxes, which you can simply click rather than typing in appraisal scores. To add check boxes on your own appraisal form, you will need to activate the Developer tab. This can be done by selecting "Options" from the File menu. After clicking "Customize Ribbon" in the Options window, you can then activate the Developer tab in the right menu. When the Developer tab is visible you can click it, then click the "Insert" button in the ribbon to reveal the Form Controls, including the Checkbox option. After inserting a check box on the worksheet, you can format it by right-clicking it and selecting "Form Control" from the drop-down menu.

Self-Appraisal Forms

If a part of your HR policy is to have employees appraise their own work, you can create a second appraisal form based on your own copy that you can give to them. To ensure employees only enter the required information without altering other fields or accidentally deleting cells containing formulas, you can protect these cells from being edited. You can hide formulas by selecting the cells containing them and selecting the "Hidden" option in the Format Cells dialog box. The Protect Sheet options are located in the Changes group under the Review tab, which you can select after you have finished creating the form.

Tracking Progress

The same Excel workbook can be used to create multiple worksheets for each employee, each containing a separate performance appraisal. Consolidating scores in a summary worksheet can be useful for tracking performance over time. You can use this feature by creating a new worksheet and then clicking "Consolidate," which is located in the Data Tools group under the Data tab. Before using this feature, it's important to ensure that each appraisal worksheet uses the same layout, with the corresponding data occupying the same cells in each worksheet. Once the data is consolidated in a summary worksheet, you can chart the employee's progress using a line graph.

About the Author

A published author and professional speaker, David Weedmark has advised businesses and governments on technology, media and marketing for more than 20 years. He has taught computer science at Algonquin College, has started three successful businesses, and has written hundreds of articles for newspapers and magazines throughout Canada and the United States.